Notes:
Data source is the 1990 book, "Moomaw-Mumma-Mumaw-Mumaugh Genealogy" compiled by Robert Austin Moomaw (deceased).
Story written by Belle Toll Conlee (transcribed by Sherry Kaseberg, Wasco, OR)
FORWARD by Sherry Kaseberg
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Belle Toll Conlee of Sherman County, OR wrote the story based on what
her father and grandfather told her. She did not strictly stay
chronological in her story, so as I type, I am inserting pieces where they
belong.
She starts with Winslow Toll who was married three times, wives unknown
names. By his first marriage he had Melvin who d as a young man, Jonathan
Layton Toll who m1 Matilda Barney, m2 Sarah Almira [Applegate] Moomaw, twins
James and John. By his second marriage he had 8, one of whom was Will. By
his third marriage he had Lydia and Parker Toll who lived in or near Arland
and Clarksville, MO. Jonathan Layton Toll and John Toll came west 1863 to
CA, then some of the family went to Eugene, OR area.
Nicholas Barnett Barney m Lydia Matilda/Matilda and lived in IL, on the
Mississippi River at Baytown on Painter Creek [I haven't had the atlas out
yet] then sold their mill there and went west to CA where he lived at Chico
and Placerville. [Remember that the transcription is not finished]. Nicholas
Barnett Barney had at least five children: Lydia Matilda who married
Jonathan Layton Toll, Pamela/Pamellia Marie who m either Bill Mains or Dave
Peters, Nancy who married either Bill Mains or Dave Peters, Ruth who m Henry
Smith and were the first to come west to CA 1862, and a son Hugh Barney who
stayed in IL.
Jonathan and Lydia Matilda Toll went to Lane Co OR ca 1882 with their son
Nicholas. Children of Jonathan Toll include Lydia b 1854 m Scott Westrope;
Nicholas Barnett Toll who m Jennie Melissa Moomaw, parents of Belle Toll
Conlee; an infant son born and buried on the Oregon Trail 2 miles from Fort
Bridger; Clemma who m Levi Deffenbacher; Catherine/Kate Nellie Toll who m
Charley Winters ca 1889; George; a baby girl who was born and the mother d
in childbirth, the baby taken by John Toll and his wife to raise but she
died young of illness.
Nicholas Barnett Toll and Jennie Melissa Moomaw had these children: Louella
Matilda who m Charles somebody; two infants died young; a "blue baby" died
young; Sam named for Sam Moomaw Jennie's brother; Flora; Belle b 29 March
1888 Lane County in their homestead cabin; William; Carl; Bertha; John.
The 1863 wagon train to CA included the Mains family, the Adam Moomaw
family, the John Toll and Jonathan Toll families, the Peters family, and a
Morris married to a Barney.
Nicholas Barney m1 ---------- who died before 1863. He m2 Catherine [Stark]
Applegate who was b IN, lived IL and married and divorced Hesakia/Hezekiah
Applegate. Catherine had three Applegate children: Sarah Almira, Sam and
Jane. Sam married Mary Ann Bostick and Mary Ann m2 George Westrope. Oh, what
a tangled web! Sarah m1 Adam Moomaw and they had [it appears] Jake, Adam,
Jennie Melissa who m Toll, Jim, Sam, Almilda, and Mary, some born in IL,
then she m2 Leroy Waite. Lived Chico.
Almilda Applegate m John Stigall and lived at Chico. Their children were
Walter, Clarence, Stella, Jesse, Frank and Josy.
SAlly, sister of Nicholas Barnett Barney, m Sam Hayden and lived Nebo, IL,
went to CA and had these children: Mary Ann Hayden who m Sam Westrope
brother of Thomas, uncle of Scott; Bill; Joe; George; John. Sally and
Nicholas BB also had a brother Ben and two half-brothers Joe and Dan. It
appears that the father of Ben, Sally, and Nicholas B Barney was Nicholas
Barney, son of Thomas [or John] Barney with roots in Boston.
That's where I am with this on this day. There are two spiral notebooks with
every page covered with writing, and some lovely little sketches of the
buildings on the Lane County homestead. I don't know if this should be
published by the Lane County historical or genealogical group, or yours or
Sherman County Historical Society. Just thinking about it, a wonderful
story. Belle started her story, then started over, a lot of repeats, then
new info, then repeats. This is tedious, and exciting. I am the director of
the Sherman County museum and our exhibit chair, Myrna Melzer, owns part of
the farm where Belle Toll Conlee spent her married life, E of Moro. She is
developing an exhibit with some of the things Belle left in the farm house.
That's why we have this manuscript.
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----- Story by SARAH BELLE TOLL CONLEE ------
This is the year of 1964, and I am 76 years old March 29th and it’s time that I should write the story of my life and that of my immediate forebears while I still have my good memory. I want to tell about the migration by wagon train across the plains, about the gold rush days in California, as told to me by my father and grandfather who both had remarkable memories. But first I will give a brief history of my grandfather’s father, Winslow Toll.
Winslow Toll came to the United States from Wales as an educated young man of 18 years who also was taught the art of boxing and other sporting arts. He was also a shoemaker by trade. He met and married a young English/Welsh girl who had come to the United States at the age of 14 and who was bound to a man who mistreated her, I suppose as an apprentice. She ran away and hid from him, and thereby gained her freedom. They had a very hard time for a while. They came to the Mississippi River country and their first child was named Johnathan Layton Toll, who was to be my grandfather. He told me he was born at Bowling Green, Kentucky, September 18th, 1828. Others said he was a year old when the family moved to Missouri, somewhere near Clarksville, or in the eastern part, near the Mississippi River. The country was really frontier country with lots of wild animals and Indians and few settlers near their home. Winslow’s [in another piece she says it was Nicholas Barnett Barney] work required long trips from home and Great-Grandma was alone so much. Barges were always loaded going down-river, and most of the time the barges were sold, too, for the river current would take the barges down stream. Once when the river froze over Great-Grandpa was caught away from home all winter, so Great-Grandma had to fend for her self and children alone. She was very frightened of the Indians, but they brought her a wild turkey, knowing she had nothing much in the house. The twins, John and James, were born next, and then a son Melvin was born. When Melvin??? Was a young man he became over-heated and laid in the grass and caught cold and died of pneumonia. Then Great-Grandma died and Winslow married again, and by the second wife, sister to his first wife, had eight children. One was named Will, I believe was the oldest half-brother. He fought in the Civil War for the Union Army. Grandfather had a letter from him while he still lived in California, before 1882. I do not know much about those children for by then Grandpa was away from home on his own and did not speak much of them. I know that the Tolls of Molalla are kinfolks but not just now.
Then the second wife died and Winslow married again, and his third wife bore two children - a girl named Lydia and a boy named Parker who lived around Arland, MO. Neither ever married but last lived at Clarksville, MO. Once Grandfather asked me to write to Lydia for him and she answered my letter; that was when I was about 12 years old. The Molalla folks claim that Lydia and Parker Toll were their aunt and uncle, and they had been in their home. After Grandfather came west he lost track of his kin in Missouri.
When Johnathan Toll was a young man he got a job on a ferry boat. Later he worked on a river boat that traveled up and down the Mississippi River. It was his job to help stoke the fire and pull the whistle cord./ Once this boat carried an excursion crowd. When Johnathan pulled the cord and the whistle blew a pretty girl in the crowd was startled. Johnathan had had his eyes on her, so did it again when she did not expect it, then talked to her so got acquainted, and later married her.
She was Matilda Barney, daughter of Nicholas Barnett Barney and Matilda Barney who had built a flour or grist mill called The Hardscrabble Mill on Painter Creek on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. Farmers brought their corn to be ground from the higher elevation where everyone had grain fields and orchards and garden places. The land was steep by the mill, and steps led up the hill from the water’s edge to his home. The house was a one-storied one. The kitchen was not connected by a door from the other rooms. One had to go outside to go to the kitchen. This was near BelleView and Baytown – a landing for river boats – where they tied up at night when plying the river. Water poured over a ledge of slate and he used that to power the mill. A canal had been cleared from the main channel of the river and timber and brush cleared from the passage. Baytown was a thriving town in those days but now it is known as Mosier Landing or just Mosier, and there is very little town left. Just one long street or road with a few homes and a service station and post office – while off in a field there is a general store. The country seems thinly settled at this time, 1949. [drawing of the creek, river and town here]
When Nicholas Barnett Barney first came to Illinois he worked on the river, then later built rafts to haul freight to New Orleans, produce raised along the river. He had married Matilda, who had been a stowaway on a boat when she was only 14. She was unable to speak English, supposedly an apprentice, nearly starved to death. She had hidden, taken milk from a cow in the pasture and was horrified when she found out that she was taking it from small children. She was a Welsh woman?
The Barneys had come from Boston. Nicholas Barnett Barney’s father was Nicholas Barney who served as sergeant in the Continental Army from West Virginia during the War of 1812???, according to records from the Library of Congress. Before that, the large family of Barney men had been ship carpenters, and a brother of Nicholas Barney was the famed Commodore Joshua Barney who became the captain of the good ship Sydney at the age of 19 – and whose exploits have been written in at least three books besides history books, and who had received a sword from Congress in Washington, D.C. for services rendered in behalf of our country. He was an uncle of Nicholas Barnett Barney of Illinois and had given his nephew his ship’s compass and his dirk or knife. The father of Nicholas and Joshua Barney was Tom [later John Barney she says] who raised a large family and lived close to ____ Ba…..near the great shipping port. Most of the men worked in the ship building trade.
Nicholas Barnett Barney had one brother, Ben, and two half-brothers, Joe and Dan, and a sister who was Aunt Sally who married Sam Hayden. Her children were cousins to the Barney children. Aunt Sally Hayden’s daughter, Mary Ann Hayden, had married Sam Westrope – a brother to Thomas Westrope – who was Uncle Scott Westrope’s father. They lived near Nebo, Illinois. Thomas Westrope had married a Miss Willard, kin to prize fighter Willard[Jess]. Old Sam Hayden came to California via the Horn in 1849 during the gold rush days. He was 90 years old and died before he got back around the Horn.
Aunt Sally’s children were Bill, Joe, George, John and Mary Ann Hayden. An Alex Salsbury is also mentioned here, who came to California near Chico; in fact my father knew of him. [?married a Hayden?]
The father, Thomas Barney, of all the numerous Barney clans had come to America from England early and his home was close to shipyards in Boston harbor.
---I have separate notes on his history.
Johnathan Toll and Matilda Barney Toll moved to live near the mill [in a lumber town in what became a ghost town called Oquackes, Iowa] and a saw mill was built. Johnathan was the boss of the saw mill. In 1949 the mill pond was still there ‘though the mill had been torn down. A part of the foundation of the flour mill was still to be seen. Grandfather built another house farther up on the hill from the Barney home. The hill top was more level, and cornfields and an orchard was in use. Steps went up the hill from the mill. Johnathan’s and Matilda’s first child was Lydia, 1854, and two-and-a-half years later Nicholas Barnett Toll was born, September 18th, 1857 – and he was my father. So, after this I shall refer to him as Father.
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Great-Grandfather’s house had three rooms. One had to go outside to reach the kitchen. Nicholas Barney.
Going back to Johnathan Toll’s childhood in Missouri. I remember this story that he told me when I was a child and he lived part-time with us, in the early 1900s. He was raised in a slave state among many Negroes and learned much about them. Though Winslow never owned slaves except when a grateful man had given him a little Negro boy and girl, which he freed as soon as they were able to fend for themselves. He was appointed a patrolman and he was to keep the runaway Negroes from crossing the Missouri Mason and Dixon Line to escape up North, just before the Civil War.
The Negroes loved to slip away at night to meet in an abandoned and isolated Negro cabin in a maple grove where they sang and danced and made merry to the music of rattling bones and whatever they could play…and they danced solo and sang their songs. Johnathan, the boy, had discovered their meeting place and came to watch, unseen. Once, at the height of their evening, he yelled, “Patrol!” The Negroes scattered like quail, all except one fat buck who tried to go through the open window. When half-way through the window he fell on him and there hew as kicking and flailing his arms. Johnathan never told his father about this cabin.
When the family lived in Missouri, they often had many visitors and sometimes they stayed overnight. There was an old Negro cabin in the back yard that they remodeled into an extra bedroom. People of that time believed in ghosts and spirits, and loved to tell scary stories as they sat around the fireplace at evening time. After an evening of listening to their parents tell ghost stories, Johnathan and the twins were sent out to sleep in the cabin. When the opened the door they saw two big eyes low on the far side of the cabin and were too scared to enter without a light. Finally Johnathan said, “Heck! I’m not afraid! I’ll go kick it in the face,” and marched bravely in. The twins watched fearfully from the doorway. He kicked it as hard as he could with his bare toes, then hopped and cried while the twins ran for help. Thinking whatever it was had Grandpa in a death grip, Winslow came with his light and they discovered that the moon was shining down through the squat chimney of the fireplace on two stones placed there as andirons.
Johnathan told of the Negroes and how they learned to count sheep, saying, “This one. That one. T’other one. Old black ewe and two more and another one.” One lingo was, “Onery, Orsy, Ickery Ann. Philisy, Fallasy, Nicholas, John. Greevy, Gravy, English Navy, Stinktum, Stanktum, Jericho, Buck”
Nicholas Barnett Barney ground the corn and wheat grown in the neighborhood. There were many neighbors, and parties and bees were the social events…and camp meetings. One neighbor, Dan Ellison, owned a big ranch near Bayville. He had a brother who lived near. Jim Crowder and his wife, Mahalia, were very close friends to Johnathan and Matilda, and they often killed hogs together in the flats below the mill. Grandfather never mentioned where the children went to school, but I have been told the school was farther up the creek from the mill. Some of the Toll family lived on Bay Creek near Nebo.
All the hills had scrub timber. It had been cut and now only second growth. There were oak, hickory, locust and walnut trees besides many others. Mostly all hardwood. There were many snakes, mostly cottonmouth. Very poisonous. Also turtles all along the Mississippi River swamps and water. Not far from Bayville is a road that goes east to the Illinois River, to a place called Kamptown, and it was a shady and good place to camp, and that is where the camp meetings were held. From what Grandfather said, I understood that protracted religious meetings were held there by the Carmelite/Camelite [now we call it Christian] church. People would camp there for two or three weeks. Now there is a ferry to cross the river, there at Kamptown, but no buildings to be seen near.
Nicholas Barnett Barney and his wife, Lydia Matilda, had four daughters and one son: Lydia Matilda, Pamela/Pamellia Marie, Ruth and Nancy, and Hugh Barney. Henry Smith, a Dutch or German man, married Ruth. Bill Mains, ¼ Cherokee Indian, married one of the Barney girls, and another girl married Dave Peters who lived near the folks.
The Civil War
The Civil War had been progressing slowly into Illinois and Missouri, and times were getting more uncertain. No one knew if they seeded their crop if they would be allowed to harvest it. The folks who brought their corn to be ground often argued about the pro and con of the slavery question. Illinois was a Union state and Missouri was a slave state, and they were called Secessionists. No one knew whom to trust and often fights occurred. They in Illinois expected to be invaded by the Missourians most any day.
So many of the able young men were drafted or conscripted as a Home Guard unit, and were called to an encampment for training. The men took their families along and met at different places every so often for six weeks or so. Once they camped at Pittsfield. By then my father was about five and at the age to notice events and take part in activities as all little boys try to do.
He remembered seeing his father, Johnathan, riding his own little bay mare, galloping up and down the practice field as part of the Cavalry brigade. At that time one of the marching tunes was “The Yellow Rose of Texas” and when the men marched,my father marched along behind the soldiers, imitating the noise of the fife with his mouth. He learned to beat time by drumming on an empty ten-gallon wooden coal oil box which pleased the soldiers who gave him money to do it. His mother was concerned because he bought candy with it.
Once when younger, at home near the mill, he ran away from home to go see his Grandma. He went to the kitchen but Grandma happened to be in the other part of the house. He discovered that she had been churning so he found a shovel and scooped ashes from the fireplace into the churn. When Grandma came in, she paddled him, and his mother met him and gave him another paddling.
[tentatively here! Sometime before 1863, Grandmother Barney died, and before that date, Grandfather Nicholas Barney married Catherine Stark Applegate. She was born in Indiana, had come to live in Illinois, then she divorced Hesakia Applegate. She had three children: Sarah Almira Applegate, Sam Applegate and Jane Applegate. Sarah Almira married Adam Moomaw, whose parents were Dutch and had come to the U.S. still not able to speak good English. They had two sons, Jake and Adam. Mrs. Moomaw had a sister who married Peter Windmiller who also lived in the neighborhood.]
California-bound
Early in the year, 1862, Henry and Ruth Smith and their family decided to go to the gold fields in California, and prepared for the journey. At the last moment, Johnathan and Matilda decided to go with them ‘though they did not have time to prepare. The two families went up the long 400 miles to the starting place of the wagon train they hoped to join. The captain told Grandfather Johnathan he could not go as he was not equipped properly – that the Indians were bad along the trail and his team and wagon were not the right kind to travel so far. So Henry joined the train but Grandfather settled on a farm near the ferry in Henry County, Iowa [Iowa crossed out, then re-stated in another place] for when he reached the ferry, the ferryman had orders not to let anyone cross the river. He said a company of Union soldiers were expected immediately and there was likely to be a battle there. He told Grandpa Johnathan he could camp in the middle of his peach orchard if he would stay out of sight. So Grandfather and family camped for about six weeks, or until he gave Grandpa permission to cross back over on the ferry. Lydia was 9, and Father was going on 6. It was a very long trip, 400 miles, back to the mill again. The ferryman and his wife made a lot of effort for Grandpa. He let them take Lydia as their own child, but of course, they would not give her up. Later, after they had gone to California, they met those folks again, who also came west to the gold fields.
They had word by letter from Henry Smith that they had settled at Placerville, California after safely reaching their promised land. By the spring of 1863, the country was terribly unsettled. Great-Grandpa Barney could not keep peace among the many who came to the mill and, while waiting, argued and fought either for or against his neighbors, and no one knew what next to expect. So, the whole family prepared to leave Bayville, gathering in supplies and discarding what they could not take, emptying barrels of pickles and saurkraut, and other things deemed too bulky to put in their wagons or could not use. Only Hugh Barney stayed in Illinois, of the Barney family.
Grandfather Barney sold his Hardscrabble Mill and many of their neighbors decided to come with the train. There was some 20-25 wagons made the journey from that neighborhood. Among them was the Barneys, Mains, the Adam Moomaws, two families of Tolls, John and Johnathan, Peters who was married to Matilda’s sister, and the Morris?? Family who also was married to a sister of Matilda. They did not thrive very well until they met about 20 or 25 wagons that made up the Missouri train. They had camped overnight at a place waiting for the Missouri train.
As soon as they had left the starting point, out two days’ travel or so, stray men would join their train. They seemed to have plenty of ammunition and guns and saddle horses. The wagonmaster Hagar/Hogar, told them they were welcome to join the train and to take their share of night guarding and work. They would come in alone and no one asked them but everyone knew they were deserters from the army. They were trained soldiers and later were gladly welcomed to help protect them from the war-like Indians.
Next section: Recollections of my Childhood, and Remembered Stories of my family by Belle Conlee. At this point I inserted new information into the first, above.
The long trek along the Platte River was tedious. The ox teams could travel only at the most 20 miles a day. When the train reached an Indian tribe boundary – and there were no Indians to meet them – they knew they were in unfriendly territory,and needed to be on guard. If there were Indians there, they must steel themselves to hoard their food, for they begged for tobacco and food at every opportunity. A dignified chief would ride up and slap his chest and say, “Me. Big Chief. Give’embiscuit – bacca.” Anything to eat or drink, and to pacify them, many did give the Indians food they needed for themselves. The travelers were anxious to be on friendly terms. They would follow the train to their farthest boundary line, then another tribe would take over, or none be seen at all. When the day’s journey was over, the wagons were formed into a circle and camp fires were built and cooking began. The dust of the journey was washed off if water was at hand. Sometimes they had to make a dry camp. The men were told of their guard duty and other chores assigned to others.
My father was six years old, going on seven, and he was seven on the 18th of September. He was a very observing child and remembered details of the trip. After they got out farther on the trail where the Indians were unfriendly, they doubled the guard at night. Once my grandfather Johnathan lost his team of oxen. The train would not wait for him. He went back alone, while the train kept traveling in hostile Indian territory, and found his oxen, and came up with another camp of travelers and asked to stay with them that night. The next day he caught up with the wagon train again. Grandfather was most brave to go out alone.
Somewhere along the trail by the Platte River the train camped at night, the wagons drawn tightly in a circle with the oxen and cattle inside, and the night guard on duty. The cattle began milling and bawling and racing inside of the circle, and finally made a gap by upsetting Uncle John Toll’s wagon, and racing through in a stampede and disappeared in the night. Uncle John and Aunt Mary were sleeping in the wagon. They had placed a layer of sacked flour on the bottom or floor of the wagon bed, then made their bed on the top. When the wagon was upset, all that load was piled on them. Uncle John was a very strong man and by arching his back was able to protect Aunt Mary until the wagon could be removed. It was found that Indians had crawled within reach of the circle in the high grass and shot arrows into the sleeping cattle, which panicked them.
For three days they camped there and searched for the missing stock. Some small bunches were found, but the main herd could not be found. The captain had delegated certain of the men to stand guard to the camp and the rest divided in searching groups. At the end of the third day, one group had found the cattle in a corral across the Platte River, an old French man had a band of Indians working with him. They had stampeded the cattle, then herded them across the river, where the men found them. The Frenchman said his Indians had found them, and that the wagon train could have them at $5 per head.
When this searching group returned that night and told the wagonmaster, he immediately sent a man on to the fort. That night he carefully planned how he hoped to get the cattle back. No one could afford to pay that much for their own cattle, so he delegated certain men to move the train, just past the one crossing of the river, some of the extra men were to guard the train, while he took a group of horsemen across the river to get the cattle.
My father young Nick knew the plan and he and Lydia watched from the wagons. The captain tried to get the Frenchman to let them have the cattle but he insisted on the $5 and was most insolent.
The captain had told the men, when the cattle were counted out of the pen to haze them quickly across the river. So he dickered a while, then agreed to the Frenchman’s terms, told his men to, “count them out,” by opening a gate letting them through to count them. As soon as the cowboys got them out and started toward the river, the captain was figuring up the price, delaying as long as he could. When he saw the cattle far enough away, he suddenly spurred his horse and raced after them. The Frenchman let out a whoop and told his Indians to go after him. They ran for their ponies and all followed, but too late, for when they reached the river they could see the men on the other side guarding the wagons with guns. They stopped to parley, not daring to stop their horses in the quicksand, but circled around while they discussed the possibility of getting the cattle.
When the cattle reached the wagon train they immediately started on, and the Indians did not follow. Later the train met a group of soldiers from the fort, and told them where to find the Indians and they came on west.
Not many years ago, I met a man in Portland who told me he was from Nebraska. I told him this story and he said that the soldiers caught this man and hung him, part of Nebraska’s history. Up till then none of my people knew what happened to his renegade Frenchman.
A few years ago, when I visited my father at his home, he told me this story again, and drew an outline of the river and camp, but did not remember the name of the fort. It was along the Platte River, with high banks all along the river, with this one exception, the main wagon trail on the north side. There was also a trail on the south side, a near view of the actual site might clarify the picture but I’m not sure if the train was on the north or south side. It was on the main-traveled trail.
Many a time my father told me about incidents along the trail. I was too busy living and growing up at the time, and did not realize the importance of them. Everyone who experienced these happenings also was busy living from day to day until the time was long past to remember details.
Father told me the train reached a special rock along the way. While people were busy making camp for the night, he wandered around back of this big rock and discovered an Indian swinging on a noose where he had been hung and left. That night an extra guard was delegated to watch for retaliating Indians. And they came to a rock called Inscription Rock where many had carved their names.
In hostile Indian territory, while preparing camp for the night, my father slipped away over a slight rise toward a sandy river shore. When his parents missed him, they searched, thinking that he had been captured by Indians. They ran over toward the river and saw him by the water. She found him with a bone in his hands. He said, “It looks like a sheep’s leg, and smelled like a sheep’s leg, danged if it isn’t a sheep’s leg!” She was horrified to see it was an Indian’s arm, washed out of the sand.
A company of soldiers traveled part way with their wagon train coming west from the fort to another fort. The train was happy to have their protection.
After traveling on the dry and dusty plains for so long, they all were happy to come to higher ground and to see timber and bushes of blue berries. Everyone was so hungry for fresh fruit! The captain of the troop and the wagon master decided to stay over in order to gather some berries and to let the oxen and horses rest. A group was delegated to go out with the soldiers to gather berries. My grandfather, Jonathan Toll____, and some of the other men from the train. The captain told them to stay close together lest they be surprised and attacked. Jonathan wandered away because he found such good loaded blue berry bushes and was horrified to find a pile of logs, half-burned, and among the logs, the bodies of half-burned Indians. He went back to tell the captain about it, and the captain told him to keep quiet about what he found, and took the men back to camp. He took extra precaution to guard the train and they left as soon as they could. The berries were a godsend to the fruit-starved travelers.
The train often camped without water and when thirsty cattle did not reach a river it was hard to manage them. They could smell the water so began racing toward it regardless of the wagons they were hitched to. The drivers would rock along trying to control them. Often they found the water bitter with alkali which sickened the animals.
This train was bound for California. When they reached the Raft River near Fort Hall in Idaho, they took the road to California. However, while the train was still in Wyoming near Fort Bridger, when conditions of the train was at a low ebb, a baby boy was born to Jonathan and Matilda, and it died and was buried along the road, two miles from Fort Bridger. By that time most of the train was in dire straits. They were able to get some supplies of Jim Bridger and they came on to Salt Lake.
Jonathan asked the Mormons for a cow. He was told that a certain Morman had a cow to sell, so early the next morning he went to this Mormon’s home. It was a two-room log cabin. The man came out to show Jonathan the cow. The sun came up, warming the morning. It was in September and there was freshly-threshed straw in the field. Soon Jonathan saw half-clothed children running from the straw piles to the cabin. They had spent the night in the straw. He bought the cow and had milk for his own children. Salt Lake was a new town then, and cash money was not plentiful. He said folks would trade vegetables at the store, even half a head of cabbage for calico or other goods.
The train moved on to Raft River and started on to California. I heard them talk about the Humboldt country and River and after traveling through Nevada, I can realize what a hard trip it must have been. Water was scarce, and the hills barren, and mirages often fooled the travelers. The sand, from a distance, had the shimmer of water. When they reached it, it was only sand. Such scrub growth, if any grew on this desolate waste-land, and water, brackish and bitter.
In Nevada, near the gold mines, was a new mining town, on Reese River. It really was a tent town. By then the travelers on the train were worn out. It was getting late in the fall. At Reese River my Illinois family sold their outfit, teams and wagons, to a freighting company, and rode the rest of the way to Caloma on Feather River and the gold mines in the returning empty freight wagons that hauled supplies from Sacramento to the new Reese River mines. This journey ended in November.
The first job Jonathan had was one a miner hired him to dig for gold on a claim. After five days he discovered that the miner had left, and the only pay he got was the shovel. Then he got a job at a sawmill, working at night. There were few houses to be had but he managed to get one, and moved Grandmother Matilda and Lydia and Nicholas into it. Prowlers kept trying to scare Grandmother. The house was made of clapboards up and down, then cleats nailed over the cracks. Nearly every night some noise frightened Grandmother. It sounded like someone was dragging a log chain across the outside wall making a clanking noise. One moonlight night my father, a boy of seven then, was awakened and saw his mother standing by the window with an axe raised, ready to strike. Soon a pair of hands were seen inside of the window sill, pulling up to enter. The house stood high from the ground. Grandmother let the axe fall across the hands with force and they disappeared, falling to the ground. She heard someone running out back of the house. My grandfather, who was coming up the front walk, heard footsteps and raced in to find Grandmother safe. She calmly told him what happened and he found out that certain parties also wanted this house and were trying to scare them out.
As soon as he could, Grandfather Jonathan walked 60 miles to Placerville to see Henry and Ruth Smith, and it was a joyful reunion to report a safe arrival of the wagon train to Coloma. Many of the families went on to Chico and Oroville. Grandfather Nicholas Barnett Barney had a grocery store in Chico for awhile. Adam Moomaw and Sarah Almira and their family settled at Rich Gulch in Amador County. And there, in 1864, on September 19th, my mother was born. She was Jennie Melissa. Her brothers, Jim and Sam, and Almilda and Mary were born in Illinois. Mother was the last of the family. I remember my father, Nicholas Toll, telling about how his mother and father had gone to visit the Moomaws just after this baby girl was born. Soon after that several of the family moved to new locations. Grandfather Jonathan went to Placerville a little while. Henry Smith moved to San Jose, and later Jonathan moved there, too. My father was still a little boy and he and Jonathan had a potato patch. They were digging potatoes when an earthquake shook the earth, making big cracks in the potato patch. While there, Jonathan and Nicholas made a trip to San Francisco to see the city.
When Nicholas was a stripling boy, the Toll family moved to an old Spanish land grant belonging to Judge Pratt of San Francisco. There were several hundred acres and it cornered with two other land grants. Somewhere about this time Lydia married Scott Westrope, a cowboy who used to ride for the Glen Cattle Company of near Chico. His father, Thomas, and family migrated to California from Nebo, IL a little later than the Toll family.
While still on the Pratt land grant, my father, afoot, was chased up a tree by an angry bull. The cattle were wild and one dared not go among them unless on horseback. There were also lots of wild hogs.
Sometime later Mother Jennie Melissa’s -------- mother? Divorced her husband Adam Moomaw . He hever liked California and wanted to go back to Illinois, so one of the boys took him back, so she lived in Chico, or near, and married Leroy Waite. By that time, most of her children were grown except Jennie, who stayed with her. When Leroy Waite died she lived in Chico again. Her oldest daughter Almilda had married John Stigall.
The Toll family moved to Mendicino County near Cloverdale and Grandpa and Nicholas had a band of sheep. My father told of how he herded them on the brushy hillsides. A trail went up through the brush to a big flat rock that one could climb and see over a lot of territory. The trail ran on both sides of the rock. As he went up the trail he met a bear running down the trail. When the bear saw Nicholas he turned and ran back up the trail on one side of the rock. My father, frightened, ran up the other trail and met the bear face to face again, which was too much for the bear. He made a new trail getting out of there.
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After Jonathan and Matilda Toll reached California, a daughter Clemma was born, then a son Layton, then Catherine Nellie, and George, then the baby whose birth came with Lydia Matilda’s death.
It was at Cloverdale that Lydia Matilda ____ died in childbirth, and she is buried in a nearby cemetery that overlooks the Russian River, looking south. John Toll and his wife took the baby girl to raise, and it died from an illness soon afterwards. At about the same time, her daughter Lydia gave birth to a baby boy whom they named Charly Westrope.
Grandfather Jonathan was terribly upset over his wife’s death. Soon after he moved by wagon and team to Oregon, via Lakeview to the military road to Goshen. Later he secured a band of sheep and lived on the north side of Spencer Butte on a ranch that was afterwards called The Tannery? Place, about four miles south of Eugene.
Clemma was the house mother, Catherine was then five years old, that was in 1876. The sheep sickened and died and Jonathan moved back to California in 1877, near Oroville on Butte Creek. Aunt Lydia and Uncle Scott lived with them there. One day Jonathan Toll went to Chico and brought back Sarah Almira as his wife and Jennie Melissa came to live with the numerous Toll kin. She must have been 12 or 14 years old.
They lived on Butte Creek of Dry Creek part time, and my parents, NicholasToll and Jennie Melissa Moomaw, were married when she was 16 years old in 1881. This place was near the famous Cherokee Mine where gold and diamonds were found. Below this mine on a creek some miles from Oroville, California is where Uncle Scott Westrope’s brother George and his wife, Mary Ann Bostick Applegate, lived. She had married Sam Applegate, Catherine Stark’s and Hesiciah’s son, who was a Baptist preacher in Illinois. He was also the brother of Sarah Almira Applegate Moomaw Toll, Jonathan Toll’s second wife. Sam Applegate died in -------- [Ill. Crossed out]. George and Mary Anna? Anne Westrope owned two ranches, and when the Cherokee Mine was mined by hydraulic machinery, the slickens washed down on their ranch and filled all the low places with rich soil and willows soon grew all over the newly-tilled land.
George and Mary Ann had one daughter Alice Westrope, and when they died Alice continued to live there until her death not too many years ago, probably about 1950. This land was sold at her death and the proceeds divided among her cousins, the Westropes.
The Cherokee Mine played out. It is now owned by the syndicate that owns the Kimberly diamond mines in Africa. When my folks lived there they knew so many of the miners and farm families, and when the mine closed, there was a great migration. At that time, 1882, this Eastern Oregon country was opened to homesteaders. Many families came that year to Sherman County. The Indians had been peacefully placed on reservations and the rich bunch grass grew so tall and richly, that cattlemen and farmers flooded in from many countries.
California to Sherman County
The group from the mines settled near Moro, Grass Valley and Rutledge, and the Potter family settled near Klondike. The elder Potter was of Portugese nationality. He was the boss of a group of Chinamen who kept the canal cleared that had been dug to get water for the Cherokee Mine from about thirty miles in the mountains. He did not speak good English. This man and his son, Antone, and families left California in May 1882 bound for the Green Springs country near Klondike. They came via Lakeview, north, and meant to stop at Prineville, a frontier town of importance at that time. They needed supplies they were sure of getting at Prineville. Before they got there, they met a man with a family, wagons and cattle, and asked about the way and how far. The man said, “Don’t go to that God-forsaken town. It is just not safe to bring women and children there. I am taking my family back to California. Whey, they hung two men there last night.”
The Potters made a wide circle around the town, and were alert lest they get into trouble. They did meet some men horseback who asked them where they were bound and let them pass. It was a range war and the two men were taken from their beds and hung from a bridge near Prineville. The bridge that crossed the Crooked River. A third man escaped only because he left that day for Eugene via McKenzie Pass to discuss a business deal with his father. A Mrs. Dyar in Moro was a daughter of this man who escaped. She told me the story.
Antone Potter told me the story of the hanging and the meeting of the Californian. He and his son had the store and post office at Klondike, and his grandchildren still live around Klondike and Wasco. He passed away several years ago. The son, George, had been a county judge of Sherman County and now lives in The Dalles. He sold the store when he was getting crippled with Rheumatism.
The rest of the families bound for Sherman County did not reach here till November and they had a hard time that winter. Among them were the Cushman family [Cherokee Indian blood], the Moore family, the Ruggles family who lived on the land grant near Nelsen Station near the Pratt land grant, the Rutledge family and several more, among them the Vinton family.
When the Vintons lived at the Cherokee Mine, they had a ranch nearby. My father, then a young man, worked for the elder Vinton all during hay harvest and became friends with George and Dave, the sons. Also he courted Mamie Vinton. After harvest when my father went to collect his wages, the elder Vinton had no money to pay as he had been sold out because of debts, so my father never collected any of it. By that time they were preparing to come to Oregon, and they settled at Grass Valley. Mamie married Dr. Rollins who platted the town of Grass Valley and planted so many trees along the streets. Dave and George farmed and Hattie Vinton owned a hotel, later married Bill Walker and lived east of Klondike. Margaret Vinton married Walter Rutledge and they owned the Rutledge Hotel in Moro until it burned.
One time when my father came to visit me in Sherman County, we took him to call on George Vinton when he was ill. He was then the county clerk at Moro. He died soon afterwards. He also visited Grandma Ruggles who lived at Nelsen Station, California. She was a teacher and had a brother Charles Nelsen whom my father chummed around with in his youth. Grandma Ruggles raised a large family and taught school after her husband died until she could no longer do so. She was a great personality and the Ruggles’ were highly respected here. Most of them are buried at the cemetery at Moro.
This same year, Jonathan Toll and his family and the Scott Westrope family came to Oregon, 1882, to Eugene. They spent the winter near Junction City and moved out to the homesteads Jonathan and Nicholas took up about eight miles south of Eugene, 1883, the homesteads laid out side by side, 160 acres each. They built a log house of three rooms. My father and mother lived in one room and the Jonathan Toll family in the central room and they shared the kitchen.
SKETCH
There was a covered porch all the way to the kitchen door, and at the end was a milk house, also of logs, that in the summertime was completely covered with a hop vine that kept the place cool. Nicholas and Jennie Malissa Toll lived in the right or end cabin, and Jonathan and Mira Toll in the middle one. It was barely finished when my oldest sister was born on September 30, 1883. She was Louella Matilda. Then two infants were born there who died. When the land was surveyed it was found that this cabin was on my father’s homestead, but in the meantime my father built another cabin in about the center of his 160 acres, along a nice, freshwater stream that came down from a timbered hillside, always so cool to drink.
It was about this time that my father’s two sisters, Clemma had married Levi Deffenbacher and went to live not far from the homestead, and Catherine or Aunt Kate, as we always called her, married Charly Winters, and he had a cabin on a 40-acre place adjoining the two homesteads.
On March 29, 1888, I was born in this new cabin, before the floor to the main room was finished. In those days, the floor was hand-hewed and was called puncheon flooring. It served very well but the floor to the main room was later made of sawed lumber. While I was still a babe in arms, Aunt Kate was married, and I have been told that I attended the wedding in Eugene.
Uncle Layton and Uncle George were attending school in Fox Hollow in a little school house on a flat area of land close by a small stream. There were several young men attending school. When I was old enough to remember Flora had been born. I can remember playing in the corral when Flora was sitting alone. We took her with us to play. I remember peeking through the logs of the pigpen and seeing a wild hog that had been caught and put in the pen with the tame hogs. He stood back and did not eat when we came near.
When the folks first came to the homestead, there were several wild hogs in the timber. In the summertime they fed on acorns from the many oak trees, especially at the edges of small openings. One time Uncle Layton took the muzzle-loader shotgun and went hunting in the timber back of Father’s place over a high ridge we knew as Slide Mountain. In a small opening he saw a little pig alone, threw down his gun, caught the pig, and, when it squealed, it’s mother came running toward him. He dropped the pig and climbed up a slender young oak tree, the nearest he could reach. In his haste, he kept climbing and the tree bent over and he was almost lying on the ground. It was fortunate that the sow was content to have her little pig back. She trotted off into the timber. When Layton told the folks at home he found himself in for a lot of kidding, and he never tried to catch a pig in the wild again.
One winter the snow got awfully deep and the pigs, a whole drove of them, were caught in their nest between three big fir trees. The boys knew of this nest, and they were able to catch them because they were weak from lack of food. They hauled them out with a team and sled, and put them in the pen. The wild hogs would never get fat like domesticated hogs did.
This Slide Mountain was covered with big fir trees on the top and north side, but many years before the folks came, there was a big slide that flowed down making a flat place on the south side, where small fir trees sprouted and grew, so thick that even in the middle of the day it was dark on that side of the mountain. Most of this flat was on my father’s homestea
The men had built a log pen, and with a door that served as a trap door. Bait was placed inside. When the hogs went inside, they tripped the trigger and the door fell and caught them. This pen stood there, year by year, and shrank closer to the ground until it disappeared entirely. The first time I saw this pen as a little girl I thought it was a bear trap for there were many bears who at acorns and many an apple tree suffered broken limbs, too slender to hold the weight of the bears. They fed on fruit, and in the fall would be fat and sleek.
When the folks first came to the homestead there were no apple trees, but some of the near neighbors had plenty of apples and they picked and canned all the wild fruit they could pick. Then there were lots of wild blackberries and strawberries that grew rank and thick in the grass.
Jonathan planted an orchard. Many of the trees had been given by a man named Phelps who lived along the road to Eugene on Spencer Butte road. He had so many kinds of apples. Some neighbors brought apple trees from Missouri. My father planted several kinds. The ones we most liked to eat were Russett and Balflowers, Norther Spics, Waxons, Fall Pipins. These were at the log cabin where I was born, on a slope that gently leveled to a garden plot where a good garden always grew.
Jonathan built a new lumber house farther up in the center of his land, and I can barely remember when they moved from the log cabin. Everything was loaded in the wagon except the lamp and the coffee pot. Lula and I walked with Grandmother Sarah Almira up through the orchard in a path through the field and we helped Grandmother carry these.
Grandmother had been ill a lot, and one summer before they moved to the lumber house, Aunt Milda came from California to spend the summer with Grandma. She brought her son Walter, and Stella and Jesse, who was very small. Frank and Clarence had staid with their father at Chico. Stella was about Lula’s age, and she staid with us most of the time, and we played together a lot. I was a great one to tag along after the two girls, a pest to them.
Aunt Milda and Uncle John Stigall had four sons and two daughters: Frank, Clarence, Walter, Stella and, after her trip to Oregon, a little girl, Josy, whom we had never seen. Josy married and had a baby and one day, as she was bathing the baby, the stove exploded and she and the baby was killed. Frank and Clarence lived a full life. Walter died in his 40s, also Stella who had several children passed on. At present only Jesse is alive. 1964. I saw him when he was five, at the time he came with the folks to visit Grandmother. Frank, Clarence and Stella visited us, while I was in my teens, at home.
Grandmother did not live long after they moved. I can just remember her. One time we staid at Grandmother’s with Mother while my father went to Eugene for medicine. When he returned it was snowing. He put Lula, Flora and I on the saddle horse and covered us with a blanket and he walked and led the horse to take us home while Mother staid with Grandmother. Grandmother was on a couch in the kitchen. It was just after Christmas, with snow on the ground, when she died. She was buried by the side of my two infant sisters on the hill above the first homestead cabin. Not long after, a little blue baby was born to Mother and died, a sister, and Uncle Layton buried her beside the others. The graves are still being cared for.
That was a dreadfully hard winter, snow and mud and cold. They had good and helpful neighbors. I had been playing outside and when Uncle Late came to the house, we rushed in, too, and it was a surprise to me to see a tiny baby in the big chair on a bed of pillows. It had been born in the night. Father and Uncle Layton put the baby in Father’s prized fiddle box, satin-lined, coffin-like, and Uncle Layton took it away and buried it. It was a blue baby.
The next October my brother Sam was born. He was named for Mother’s brother Sam Moomaw. He was a cute little blond-haired baby, and we children loved him. I was still little when I begged to hold him when he was about three months old. Mother told me to hold him right but I had never held a baby before. I was sitting by the fireplace and the baby slipped. I grappled at him but he fell in the hearth and I cried. We were all frightened. I never tried to do that for many years.
The fireplace was made of rock for an outside base, with flat rocks for a hearth. Tocks and sticks with plastered sides inside and out went to the usual length outside near the roof for a chimney. When the fireplace was first built all the chinks of the base had been filled, and an ivy vine planted and it climbed up the chimney making a pretty green decoration. After a while the plaster between the rocks had fallen away at the base and left a large crack in view. One fall afternoon when it was cool at night, Mother built a fire in the fireplace and we all sat around admiring and enjoying the warmth. We heard a strange rattling noise under the hearth. Mother told Lula to come with her and for the rest of us to stay inside. They took up a pitchfork and a large stick and poked into the crack and out crawled a rattlesnake! He had crawled in sometime before but when the heat from the fire made the rocks hot he protested by rattling loud and clear. I had climbed to the window inside and heard them excitedly talking. It was only a short way to the grape vine and the picket fence, so it got away. We never forgot that experience. Father was away from home.
SKETCH
This is a crude drawing of our homestead log house, facing west, where I was born March 29th, 1888. That was the winter of the deep snow. A neighbor asked my father to do his chores while he and his family made a necessary trip, and the snow was three feet deep. Father had to make a trail for about one mile to go back and forth. The snow staid on for a long time.
Mrs. William Lane came to help Mother when I was born and when she saw a chunky black-haired baby, she said that I was a stray. I did not resemble the other babies, and I grew up chunky, but my hair is now mostly gray and still curly. I’ve worn it short for many years.
I was placed in the baby chair that was used as a crib, nice and soft with feather pillows. Lula, then five years old, looked at me and said, “What is it?” She was always small and slim, and so was Flora. Lula had long straight dark brown hair,and Flora was a blond baby, and still is at 74, though her hair is graying. Mother always was careful to curl my hair, that as I grew older, hung down on my shoulders. Lula and Flora had their hair cut short and it was easier to care for. They could play in the hay without bad effects, but my hair got tangled, and it hurt to have it combed. I was very proud of my curls.
SKETCH
This, slightly larger picture of the back side of the homestead cabin, shows the trail to the barn on a higher elevation to the east, climbing a slight hill. Along the trail were four or five large stumps. Outside of the stake and rider fence was the corral where the horses and sheep were kept. Mother had flowers near the cherry trees, a special specie of double daffodils that grew year after year. Our cabin was located on an old Indian camp ground where we found rocks used by Indians for arrow points. When the ground was cleared of ferns and logs, great pieces of petrified trees were exposed and the soil had a strange burnt look. There were places of loblolly mud holes that seemed bottomless. When it rained it turned to thin mud and many times the horses got stuck on the county road. Dad hauled loads of rock that sank so deep we never found them.
The Toll family, then men, all played the fiddle. My father and grandfather were fairly good, playing folk music by ear. When Uncle George was learning to play he practiced playing the tune he called “The Snow Bird.” He was naturally a slow-moving lad, and I can still hear him, in memory, learning to play, squeaking the long drawn out notes.
After Grandmother died, George and Grandfather staid on in the lumber house. Grandfather worked hard to clear his fields to plow. They chopped down large fir trees and in the fall set fire, burning the logs when they dried out. Then the men used the grubbing hoe to dig up the roots of the oak grubs that insisted on coming up from the roots each year. It was back-breaking work.
I heard Grandfather wonder why he thought that only the soil where the timber grew was worth homesteading. He walked over thousands of miles of prairie, not realizing the richness of the land, then destroying great fir trees that in later years were worth a fortune. If the ground was not plowed it soon became a bed of young trees again. Second-growth timber.
After the logs were burned and ashes were everywhere, wild grass seed was hand sown, timothy and special grass called cheat. It made good pasture. The stumps were left until they rotted and sometimes burned.
Hay was cut with a scythe. If wheat was planted it was cut with a cradle, to be bound and shocked for curing until it was dry, then threshed by hand, or used for hay. Oats grew good, too, for the horses. Soon the wild fern would take over and where it got cut with the grass and stored in the barn, sometimes the horses got sick with blind staggers and died from eating the ferny hay.
It was several years before it was found that the fern was the cause. Father lost several good horses; a neighbor lost all of his that way and he bought a span of oxen to do his heavy farm work. It did not seem to affect the oxen.
Father always had 10 or 15 cows and heifers, and they ranged on open land. After I got old enough, I walked out with Lula to bring the cows in to be milked. It was a time of exploration as we wandered toward the sound of cowbells we recognized. Back of our homestead was a clearing, Bond’s Burn, the Bond place, a vacant log house and a barn, orchard and good apples, pears and plums, more than a mile through the timber. In the spring time wonderful wild strawberries grew, and on the lower place, a flat where potatoes had been planted, and there we usually found the cows.
Our barn was made of logs, a big square building, with horse stables in a lean-to built on the north side. On the south side a cow stanction and calf pen was added, with a door that opened out into a small corral with a high fence where we penned the cows at night. Often we heard the sound of cow bells as they moved about at night. On the low stable roof, one could climb and play, high and dry on the shake roof boards. We climbed from the mangers to the hay loft to hunt for the hens’ nests in the hay.
SKETCH of the barn.
One night Father told us to look out toward the barn. It was quite dark, and there we saw a frightening sight, a large yellow object, all bright, with big teeth in an open mouth, staring at us from the stump by the barn! That was our introduction to Halloween. Father had scooped out a large yellow pumpkin, made a hideous face, and placed a pan of grease inside with a rag wick, and it burned brightly. To the left of the stump and the trail, was the long, low hog pen of logs.
My father proved up on his 160 acres and President Grover Cleveland signed the deed. The papers were destroyed when a later house burned. It usually took five years to prove that you could stay and make a living. It was tough living.
I remember the first time I went alone to the gate near Grandma’s log house to wait for a neighbor to take me to Sunday School at the schoolhouse. When I returned I sang a song they sang at Sunday School, or tried, and Mother and Lula laughed! I was not able to talk plain until I was five or six years old; I had trouble enunciating. It was something wrong with my vocal cords. I did not go to school until I was past seven years old, and I still had trouble saying words. Lula, five years older, went to school.
My first day in school, I was strange to the others, and stood on the side line at recess. The Lombard twins chased me with willow limbs and I ran and cried. A nice boy, Walter Robinson, made them leave me alone, and then they made friends with me. I was only from March 4th to the 29th younger than they were, but they had been in school since they were six.
There were several big boys and some big girls, Charley Swaggart and Frank Goodpasture, Uncle George, and John and Jim Lane, and the two Robinson boys, and a Hershberger big boy and girl, and Johnnie, Walter Shri….p/y??/, Lula, Naomi Lombard, and Jim and Dick, and Sarah and Grace, the twins, and several more. My first teacher was – (not Jincy Dickson) but ________. There was only one vacant seat left so I sat with Jim Lane. The schoolhouse was small, the seats were hand-made of sawed, wide lumber, as was the blackboard, and then painted. There was a long built wood stove in front of the seats and near the recitation bench. It had four windows, two on each side, and a water bucket and a bench where we put our dinner buckets, and a place to hang our coats in the back near the door, and an open woodshed in the back as a lean-to. The siding was of wide lumber boards with cleats nailed over the cracks. This was known as the Fox Hollow School, No. 98, and I was the first to graduate from the 8th grade. We played ball at recess; there were just enough to make a team.
SKETCH of school with rose bush
Sam was about two years old when William was born in October, and when he was still a baby in Mother’s arms, Father and Mother moved us to the Lockwood place one-quarter mile from the schoolhouse. I was nine then, and we still kept our home place but rented the new place. While we lived there Grandfather sold his homestead and went to California where, by then, Uncle Scott and Aunt Lydia had lived near Tahoma, and Uncle Charley Winters and Aunt Kate lived first near Sisson??, and later near Chico. Until that, Grandfather lived with us on the Lockwood place. Uncle Late and George, and Jack Hill had gone horseback to California, so we lived on alone at the homestead. It must have been about 1898 when Carl was born at the Lockwood place. Dad told me, in the afternoon, September 19th, to take the children up to the plum orchard and keep them there awhile. When we came back there was Mrs. Crosley, our neighbor, and a brand new baby. We enjoyed having a baby to play with, and made a great fuss over him. There was a clerk in the grocery store in Eugene named Carl Ogilily or Ogibily, who always gave us candy, so we suggested that our baby be named Carl.
Lula was married to Charles when she was 16 while we still lived there, 1900, in September. That left me the oldest one at home, and I became the chief cook and chore girl.
Dad got a bunch of about 30 sheep on the shares, and brought them home. When we came home from school we were eager to see them so we rushed out to the field. When I got near one old ewe she came out to meet me. I put out my hand to pet her, saying, “Nice sheepy.” She ducked her head and I was surprised to find myself flat on my back and out of breath. When I got up she did it again. That was my introduction to the sheep family. We kept the sheep for many years and it was my job to corral them at night.
After a year or two the people who lived in Grandfather’s place left, so Dad rented the place and we moved late in the fall. Frank and George Toll spent that summer with us and helped us move. Mr. Crosley rented the Lockwood place. We had much farther to go to school; we did not like that but we managed. While we lived there, Bertha was born.
The winter I was 17, we had a heavy snow storm that drifted about 12 to 16 inches deep. Dad was away so I did the chores, and had quite a time wading through snow to our new barn that Dad, Lula and I had built while we still lived on the Lockwood place. It was just across the road from the first log cabin where this family all lived together when they first came to Oregon.
Grandpa was then living with Uncle Charley Winters and part time at Uncle Scott’s, when he was not with us. Uncle Charley had a wild bunch grass horse he asked Grandpa to take care of at our place. The horse stood in the barn and I would lead it to water. After several days, I got the idea to climb on its back as it drank in a low place in the creek. Though I petted it so much, it seemed surprised but took me back to the barn where I slid off its back, and petted it some more. One cold snowy day I could not very well wade through the snow so I got on the horse again and rode it ¼ mile to the lower barn to attend to the stock, even put a gunny sack across it in front of me with 1/8 full of eating apples we kept in the hay against freezing. The horse was so gentle. When Grandpa took it home and told Uncle Charles I had ridden it, he scolded me for a daring young fool to take a chance on a wild bunch grass horse. Those days horses from Eastern Oregon were driven via McKenzie Pass to Eugene and sold to farmers. They had a bad reputation as outlaw horses. I loved this horse and wished to keep him.
That was the winter I became a woman.
Bertha was still a toddler when Dad built a house of old lumber he got from Charles Kno??ps’ old lumber mill site, and we moved again. I was most unh